Monday, July 13, 2009

Floatin' Powa News Service: I Dream of Djinni ~

Police in northern Bangladesh said they have arrested dozens of swindlers who conned people out of their money by calling them on mobile phones and pretending to be genies with supernatural powers. "It has become an epidemic here," said Farhad bin Imrul Kayes, police chief of Gobindaganj district.

Syria is another example in point. The increasingly close relationship between Washington and Damascus, the unofficial reports that a new U.S. ambassador has been appointed to Syria, the feverish work to reconcile Saudi Arabia and Syria and perhaps subsequently Egypt as well - all under the Americans' aegis - create the impression that these moves are part of a grand master plan. But can such steps bring about Israeli agreement to withdraw from the Golan Heights? Have the Americans sent any signs that Israel should prepare for such a withdrawal, or at least that the construction freeze in the territories should apply to the Golan, too? Nothing.

In 2006, Mr Kilo and 10 other activists were arrested after signing the Damascus-Beirut declaration. The statement, backed by Lebanese and Syrian intellectuals, called for normalising bilateral relations after decades of Syrian domination of its smaller neighbour Lebanon.

"Let's make peace -- both diplomatic peace and economic peace," Netanyahu was quoted by local daily The Jerusalem Post as saying at the start of a cabinet meeting in Beersheba in southern Israel, which was held there to show solidarity with the Negev capital.

"There is no reason for which we can't meet, Abbas and me, anywhere in Israel, and since we are in Beersheba, I say, let's meet here," said the Israeli prime minister.

Netanyahu said "The Palestinian people living next to us have a basic right to live with peace, security and prosperity," adding "In recent weeks, we have made great efforts to ease their lives. We've removed many roadblocks, we've decided to increase the operating hours of the Allenby Bridge for more goods, and I decided to advance a series of projects with the Palestinians to promote peace."

"But all these efforts can only bring us to a certain point, and the results will be multiplied by the dozen if there is cooperation from the other side," asserted the Israeli prime minister.

In addition to Palestinian leaders, Netanyahu also reached out to Arab countries, saying that "Let's meet, let's cooperate... We have the ability to bring many players on board."

Mr Lieberman said Mr Abbas "was not exactly legitimate" and was therefore in no position to make demands on the Israeli leadership. A day earlier Mr Abbas had called him a bad choice as Israeli foreign minister.

"We signed an agreement with the Palestinian Authority, which represents all the Palestinians. Today we have 'Fatah-land' in the West Bank and 'Hamas-stan' in Gaza. Who exactly does Abu Mazen represent? At best, half of the nation," Lieberman said.

More than 25,000 Fatah supporters on Saturday participated in a commemoration of Palestinian Authority (PA) security officers who were killed in armed clashes with Hamas militants in Qalqiliya a month ago.

U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell is due to return to the region soon to try to end a rift with Israel over Jewish settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank and press for a resumption of peace talks.

European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana on Saturday called for the United Nations Security Council to recognize a Palestinian state by a certain deadline even if an agreement is not reached between Israel and the Palestinians.

The 82-page document detailing how agency safeguards are being applied to prevent nuclear proliferation, had a one-page section on Egypt. It was unclear why the agency was disclosing the findings now. IAEA spokesman Marc Vidricaire said the agency had no comment.

The world society should reconsider the international financial system and be more democratic in decision-making so as to avoid the global financial crisis which has hampered the economic growth of developing countries, Gabr said.

Ahh I see the Muslims also enjoy the Pope's Economic Encyclical. TAKAFUL!

Below-average rainfall and insufficient water in the Euphrates and Tigris rivers have left Iraq bone dry for a second straight year, wrecking swaths of farm land, threatening drinking water supplies and intensifying fierce sandstorms that have coated the country in brown dust.

One hundred Gaza widows have been remarried in a mass ceremony on the beaches of Gaza following the loss of their husbands during the 22-day war with Israel this past January. The women - all veiled and wearing long black dresses and gloves - were married to a second husband in a large wedding organized by the Palestinian Islamic movement Hamas.

The women were widowed after their husbands, Hamas fighters, were killed in the war between Israel and Hamas in January. All of the men and women participating in the wedding were 25-years-old or younger and loyal to Hamas.

Many of the grooms, each given $2,800 by Hamas as a thanks for marrying a widow, are taking on another wife.

There can be no denying the Jewish people's legitimate right to live in peace and security on a homeland to which they have had a connection for thousands of years. We can and must move forward in the peace process, and look for ways to reach agreement between all sides. But we cannot erase the moral distinctions between tyranny and freedom and we must not edit history.

Defeated presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi's office in the presidential complex has been handed over to the government, reports say. Upon an order issued by the President's Office, the office that had been put at the disposal of Mousavi - Iran's last prime minister - was vacated and handed back to the Properties Department of the President's Office last Thursday, Jomhouri Eslami daily reported today.

The freelance reporter who had been held in an Iranian jail while covering the country's presidential election and violent aftermath for The Washington Times said Friday that he was pummeled at Tehran's airport, interrogated while blindfolded and held in a wing of a facility with thousands of anti-government demonstrators.

Iran threatened the United States on Sunday with possible legal action for detaining five of its officials for up to 30 months in Iraq. The five Iranians were given a hero's welcome home after their release last week, waving and smiling as they stepped from their plane at Tehran's Mehrabad airport to be met by their families. Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, who was also there to greet them, denounced their detention as "inhumane".

A top Iranian general said government troops are "ready to sacrifice our lives" rather than back down in the face of protests over June's disputed presidential election.Gen. Sayyed Hassan Firouzabadi, chief of Iran's Joint Armed Forces, said Iranian soldiers were willing to die as they did in the brutal eight-year Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, according to the state-run Fars News Agency. "Some may think that by protesting and chanting their slogans against us, we will back down, retreat and give up," Firouzabadi said. "We are ready to sacrifice our lives, as we showed during the time of the Sacred Defense [the Iran-Iraq war]."

Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, issued a fatwa against the regime, essentially declaring it illegitimate. We know this because of the invaluable work of MEMRI, the Middle East Media Research Institute, which indefatigably translates the region's media. The American media haven't noticed

"Assemblies, marches and demonstrations on public roads and at public places in the open air are not allowed without the permission by police," read a notice by the Public Security Bureau of Urumqi, Xinhua said Saturday.

Meanwhile, an explosion occurred Sunday morning at a refinery in Urumqi, Xinhua said. The blast at the China National Petroleum Corp. was extinguished by midday. No casualties were reported and no links to sabotage were found, Xinhua said. It was not clear what caused the explosion, but the incident was under investigation, Xinhua said.

After the tragic events of July 5 in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China, it would be useful to look more closely into the actual role of the US Government’s ”independent“ NGO, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). All indications are that the US Government, once more acting through its “private” Non-Governmental Organization, the NED, is massively intervening into the internal politics of China.

The reasons for Washington’s intervention into Xinjiang affairs seems to have little to do with concerns over alleged human rights abuses by Beijing authorities against Uyghur people. It seems rather to have very much to do with the strategic geopolitical location of Xinjiang on the Eurasian landmass and its strategic importance for China’s future economic and energy cooperation with Russia, Kazakhastan and other Central Asia states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The major organization internationally calling for protests in front of Chinese embassies around the world is the Washington, D.C.-based World Uyghur Congress (WUC).

During its golden age in the 1930s, fascism was widely viewed as a "progressive" ideology that championed economic modernization, active social welfare policies and the Leviathan state. Italian strongman Benito Mussolini and German dictator Adolf Hitler were self-proclaimed men of the left. Both leaders understood that fascism was a form of revolutionary socialism.

What differentiated Hitlerism from Bolshevism was its blood-and-soil ultra-nationalism and emphasis on the primacy of race.

Moreover, fascists sought to tether the private sector to statist social engineering. Fascism competed with Marxist-Leninism to be the successor to parliamentary democracy and capitalism -- widely viewed as moribund.

The only real opponent of fascism has been conservatism, which champions small government, free markets, Judeo-Christian civilization and individual rights. It's no accident Hitler's greatest foe was British Tory Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

Both Hitler and Mussolini were national socialists. They were militant pagans hostile to Christianity, religious orthodoxy and tradition. They believed in the cult of personality, mass propaganda and the pseudo-spiritual transformational nature of politics: charismatic leadership as a means of fulfilling people's deepest aspirations. They glorified the state, as well as the subordination of the individual and the family to the collective. They created a corporatist economy that combined big business, big labor and big government. They emphasized the nationalization of key industries, redistribution of wealth, massive public works projects and trade protectionism. They established a so-called "social safety net" through national health care, unemployment insurance and government pensions. They erected a cradle-to-grave welfare state.

Fascist social policy was so popular that President Franklin Roosevelt incorporated much of it in the New Deal.

Embarrassed by the horrors of World War II and Auschwitz, the West's liberal elite disowned Hitler and then falsely portrayed him as a reactionary right-winger.

Yet fascism's leftist heritage cannot be denied. It explains Mr. Obama's relentless consolidation of power. He is America's most radical president. At his core, Mr. Obama is a liberal fascist, fusing statism with postmodern multiculturalism.

According to the letter sent by Manisha Merchant, Vice President and Senior Counsel of Union Bank, DOJ seized the funds without a warrant, asserting non-specified exigent circumstances.

See Id.; Letter of Lev L. Dassin, attached as Exhibit 5.

Union Bank was subsequently served with a Warrant of Seizure pursuant to 18 U.S.C. §§ 981, 984, and 1955. See Warrant of Seizure (June 24, 2009), attached as Exhibit 6.

The warrant was issued twelve days after the seizure, on the basis of an affidavit filed under seal by Dana Conte, Special Agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The affidavit remains under seal.

As of the date of this filing, no criminal or civil action, including forfeiture, has been initiated with regard to this seizure. The funds seized were held in accounts owned by ASC, and consist overwhelmingly of money held in trust by ASC on behalf of approximately 13,800 individual poker players who requested the return of their money from an operator or an operator-designated third-party processor, but also include ASC's operating funds and a small amount of other funds unrelated to online poker.

Former Emergency Situations Minister Mirzo Zioyev was detained during a security operation, the spokesman said, just days after armed gunmen opened fire on a police post in the volatile Rasht Valley region. “Mirzo Ziyoev was arrested together with five of his armed followers,” a ministry spokesman told AFP on condition of anonymity.

A rebel Tajik Islamist commander was shot dead by a criminal gang during an operation to uncover arms caches and negotiate the gang's surrender, security officials said on Sunday.

Officials said Mirzo Ziyoyev switched sides on Saturday after being detained during a government operation against militants, who attacked a police checkpoint in Tavildara, in eastern Tajikistan, on Thursday.

Tavildara was at the heart of the Islamist-led resistance during Tajikistan's five-year civil war in the 1990s in which more than 100,000 people were killed.

"Turkmenistan is open for constructive partnership and sees great prospects for successful cooperation with the U.S. in various fields, including fuel and energy sector, education and agriculture in which the great positive experience of joint work has been already accumulated," Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov is quoted by the State News Agency of Turkmenistan

Last year, Ken Silverstein, an investigative reporter and the Washington editor of Harper’s magazine, lit upon a splendid idea: he would pose as the representative of a fictitious British investment firm whose huge holdings in the energy-rich, diabolically ruled Turkmenistan had inspired the company, the opaquely named Maldon Group, to spruce up the image of the corrupt and criminal regime.

Using the name Kenneth Case, and bearing as his premier qualification a canny marriage to Maldon’s chairman’s daughter, Silverstein angled to meet with Washington’s wealthiest, best connected—and, on the basis of information and belief—most cynical and least principled lobbying firms, aiming to receive their thoughts about how to burnish Turkmenistan’s image, improve its relations with the U.S. government, and obtain better coverage of the country from the news media.

Silverstein’s idea, the pursuit of which he first chronicled in Harper’s and now covers in Turkmeniscam , was enterprising, but not altogether new. In 1992, the journalist Art Levine (a contributing editor of this magazine) wrote an article for Spy magazine (where I was an editor) on the topic of Washington’s greediest, sleaziest lobbyists. As part of that story, a Spy staffer posed as a representative of a Bremerhaven-based neo-Nazi group that sought a lobbyist to help the organization rid Germany of immigrants, counter Jewish influence in Congress, and reclaim Poland.

Dovlet Mommayev was appointed acting chairman of the "Turkmengaz" state concern. By a decree of the President of Turkmenistan, Tachberdi Taghiyev was relieved of his post of deputy prime minister of Turkmenistan in connection with his transfer to the post of director of the Seyydi oil refinery.

BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan — This Central Asian country appears to have become the destination of choice for Islamic extremists fleeing Pakistan and Afghanistan. In recent days, nine suspected militants have been killed in two separate incidents in the southern part of the country. Several others have been arrested.According to the authorities, some of those killed were members of the banned Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Taliban allies who were driven from the country and eventually settled in the northwestern part of Pakistan.

"I see a direct link between the rise in militant activity in this country and the military operations in Pakistan," said Zainiddin Kurmanov, a key member of the country's parliament.

In the row over the US missile defence project in central Europe, the US is again considering a proposal by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to use a radar facility in Azerbaijan, Russian media reported Saturday.

US Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg held talks on the issue days after a meeting between Putin and US President Barack Obama, the Interfax news agency reported.

Putin had proposed to Obama’s predecessor George W. Bush to joint use the facility in Gabala, Azerbaijan. Although the US is prepared to consider Gabala, it rejects giving up on the radar system it plans to set up in the Czech Republic and the anti-missile battery in Poland in return for the Russia offer. Speaking in Baku, Steinberg said that Obama on Tuesday had a wideranging discussion with Putin about possible cooperation in the area of missile defence. The US is interested in investigating the potential of Gabala, Steinberg said.

BAKU, Azerbaijan -- A helicopter carrying Azerbaijani oil workers crashed in the Caspian Sea on Sunday, leaving two of the six people aboard missing, the state oil company said. The other four were rescued.

The helicopter had a crew of three and was carrying three oil workers from a Caspian field to the capital, Baku, when it went down, Socar spokesman Nizametdin Guliyev said. The four known survivors were hospitalized with relatively minor injuries, and rescuers were searching for the two missing people, Guliyev aid. He said the cause of the crash was not known.

Pentagon and NATO have also intensified initiatives to expand their military networks not only in South but also Central Asia and in the littoral states of the Caspian Sea.

On June 24-25 NATO held the first Security Forum of its Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC) in Central Asia, the first outside of Europe in fact, in the capital of Kazakhstan, which borders both Russia and China and possesses the largest proven reserves of oil and natural gas in Central Asia and among Caspian Sea states aside from Russia and Iran.

The meeting gathered together the defense chiefs of 50 nations, 28 full NATO members and 22 partners; that is, from over a quarter of the world's 192 nations.

One report of the summit succinctly summarized its main focus as "reviewing the security situation, with special emphasis on Afghanistan, Central Asia and the Caucasus region, and of energy stability."

President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev last week agreed to a joint missile-launch monitoring facility, but their new agreement is based on an old plan. The original proposal dates to President Bill Clinton, who first discussed it with Russian leader Boris Yeltsin and later settled on a plan with Yeltsin's successor, Vladimir Putin.

“Nabucco,” short for “Nabucodonosor,” is one of Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi’s best-known operas. The story follows the Jews in exile in the days of Babylon’s King Nebuchadnezzar around 600 B.C.

The epic story of struggle, faith and the longing for a homeland by the Jewish slaves became a catharsis of nationalistic fervor to Italians dejected over the failure of their anti-Austria movement at the time of the opera’s Milan opening in 1842.

The opera’s most famous number, the “Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves,” starts with the words, “Fly, thought, on golden wings.” The song struck a similar responsive chord in the hearts of the audience in the Vienna State Opera in 2002.

Among the audience at that time were energy specialists from five partners of a natural gas pipeline project driven by an ambition to pump gas from the Caspian Sea to Austria via Turkey and the Balkans without crossing Russia. They named their pipeline project “Nabucco” over dinner after the performance.

The project’s aim - to diversify natural gas transport to address persistent energy concerns in Europe and energy dependance on Russia - mirrored the opera’s themes of freedom and longing for independence.

Undeterred by the global slowdown, Russia's state-run energy leviathan Gazprom has pushed ahead with an expansion masterplan of huge ambition that has raised questions over its true motives. Gazprom chief executive Alexei Miller has warned Europe - keen to break Russia's stronghold on gas supplies - against turning the issue of energy diversification into a "fetish."

Two men from Kazakhstan were arrested this week and charged with producing hundreds of dollars worth of counterfeit bills in their Chatham apartment. Alexandr Kustovskiy, 21, and Alibek Tailakov, 19, both of 1297 Main Street, Apt. A, will be arraigned Monday on charges of possession of counterfeit currency and manufacturing counterfeit currency.

A scant 6% of the S&P 500, or 31 companies, is due to report results this week. But the list includes major financials Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase, along with tech leaders Google, Intel and IBM.

"When we passed this Recovery Act, there were those who felt that doing nothing was somehow an answer," he said. "Today, some of those same critics are already judging the effort a failure although they have yet to offer a plausible alternative."

Stern said the Treasury plan was "status quo" -- more capital, more liquidity, better supervision, far-reaching resolution authority for the largest institutions. "There is little reason to think that these steps will, individually or collectively, succeed in reining in too-big-to-fail effectively over time because they do not change the incentives which create the problem," Stern said. Creditors in these large complex institutions will still assume they will be protected if failure is threatened," Stern said.

The Swiss bank UBS and United States federal prosecutors sought on Sunday to delay a hearing scheduled for Monday so the two sides could try to settle their closely watched dispute over the release of names of wealthy American clients of the bank who are suspected of offshore tax evasion. But the postponement request, made in a joint legal filing in a federal court in Florida, came amid fresh threats by the Justice Department that it might impose financial sanctions on UBS and possibly indict the bank should it continue to refuse to disclose the names if required to do so by a judge. “UBS has not yet faced all the consequences of its illegal conduct in the United States,” said a Justice Department filing in the case on Sunday.

The UK Treasury acted with "significant flaws in its rationale" over its handling of the Icesave banking crisis and Iceland was "opaque", "contradictory" and "failing to co-operate adequately" with the British Government.

The iconic American investigative journalist I.F. Stone once said, "All governments are run by liars and nothing they say should be believed." Stone's credo is all the more relevant today when it comes to the pronouncements of intelligence agencies and their corporate masters, particularly where official enemies are concerned.

Zombies and Botnets what are they? Zombies are computers that have been infected with codes from a hacker that allows them to manipulate the computer. Several zombies are called a herd, and herds joined together make up a botnet.

Attorney General Eric Holder is considering whether to appoint a criminal prosecutor to investigate the Bush administration's interrogation practices, a controversial move that would run counter to President Barack Obama's wishes to leave the issue in the past.

Holder plans to make a final decision within the next few weeks, a Justice Department official told The Associated Press on Saturday night. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on a pending matter. Justice Department spokesman Matt Miller said Holder planned to "follow the facts and the law."

The CIA's Rogue OperationEveryone is playing the guessing game regarding the secret program which the CIA hid from Congress. I still think it has to do with outsourcing torture.

"For some women, getting pregnant can start clocks ticking and make them suddenly want to be mothers, despite previous agreements," warned Snow after noting that "an unplanned and unwanted pregnancy can dramatically affect an otherwise loving long-term relationship," especially if "they discussed the possibility and specifics (of pregnancy) at the start of the relationship.

" The presumed conclusion of the pre-pregnancy discussion is that the man "may hope she's going to stick to the original plan and terminate the pregnancy."

The mainstream media have been incredibly slow to pick up on a creepy comment by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in a New York Times interview published today but flagged last week. In it, Ginsburg talks about Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling that legalised abortion:

Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion.

What? You can find the full context of the remark here, in the Times interview, but it doesn’t settle matters. And the (pro-choice) media haven’t exactly jumped on the story. Bloggers are incredulous.

"It was an honour to meet Pope Benedict and hear his perspective on a number of important issues, including human rights and an ethical response to the global economic crisis," Harper said in a statement released after his audience with the pontiff. I expressed my deep appreciation for the Holy Father's moral and humanitarian leadership as an advocate of human dignity, peace and religious liberty, and for the spiritual leadership he provides to Catholics in Canada and throughout the world," Harper said.

The Parur synagogue, located in the village of North Paravur, approximately 18 km. north of Cochin, dates to the early 17th century. It was believed to have been built on the ruins of a previous synagogue from the 12th century. Along with other Jewish houses of worship, the Parur shul served greater Cochin's 3,000 Jews until most moved to Israel after the establishment of the state. Fewer than 35 Jews remain in the region.

The Flying Camel

Arebel's Diary

BabbaZed Vinyl Cultessa 2012

BabbaZee Repenthouse Pet 1982

Should GOD reward you on your terms then, when you refuse to repent? You must decide, not I... So, tell me what you know... ~ Job 34:33

"You surrender in your own name. Leave me out of it. "

Obey & Endure

No matter how many times I explain to people that I understand that they feel lost and helpless and betrayed by their leaders in the face of the Jihad, that I understand deeply that these are the only people that you perceive to be "standing up to jihad" - no matter how much irrefutable information I give you that many of these so called anti jihadists are just as bad as the jihad itself - You will turn the blind eye out of expedience, out of fear, out of laziness, out of shallowness of moral character, out of stupidity, out of tribal affiliation, out of complacency, out of ignorance, out of vanity, out of hatred.... take your pick. In any event you will chose to stay blind. Let those who have eyes, see:

This Notta Blahhhg Has Been Approved By The Elderbunny Of Zion

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If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.

~ Leviticus 20:13

Next time someone tries to shove some Homo Stultus dogma down your throat it would please me very much if you would use the following links to express your disinterest in their Darwingelical Dawkins Da'Wa....